


This Voicemail Box Is Full

by oulfis



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Audio Prompt, F/F, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-08 02:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11072607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oulfis/pseuds/oulfis
Summary: Steve isn’t great at talking about her feelings, but Samantha thinks she should be taking to somebody. So she starts leaving messages on the voicemail box that she knows Sam will never check.





	This Voicemail Box Is Full

**Author's Note:**

> Audio prompt written and recorded by [Readbyanalise010](http://ao3.org/users/Readbyanalise010)  
> Fic written by [oulfis](http://ao3.org/users/ouflis), and beta-read (and, really, midwived into being) by the incomparable [pangodillO](http://ao3.org/users/pangodillO) and [adventuresinjoyland](http://ao3.org/users/adventuresinjoyland)!

Cover Art created by Fire_Juggler.

**Streaming:**

For mobile streaming: **[***Click here***](http://analise010.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/CapRBB%20Audio%20Prompt.mp3)**

**Download** (right-click and save) the **[MP3]()** || Size: 20 MB || Duration: 00:02:07 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

## This Voicemail Box Is Full

Sam is pretty sure she and Steve are making friends with each other, getting out of that “coworkers” zone. They’re drinking smoothies after a good run, and they’ve been talking about the latest Avengers mini-crisis that pulled Steve away from SHIELD and onto a battlefield with the Falcon. It’s shop talk, but when you and your coworkers regularly save each other’s lives, shop talk isn’t half-bad for really getting to know each other.

It’s a good afternoon, until a kid comes in with her dad and freaks out wanting an autograph. Steve does great with the kid, objectively speaking — asks the girl’s name, shakes hands with her dad, signs everything that’s shoved in front of her. But Sam recognizes just enough of herself in Steve’s stiff, miserable smile to know that Steve is not feeling it. Steve had been sprawled out a little, like someone who actually sweated would sit to cool off, but for the girl she sits ramrod-straight. Even after they leave, Steve doesn’t relax.

“It’s always weird having to put the show biz face back on, huh?” Sam says, ready to commiserate, but all it gets her is her own version of that I Am Officially Okay Steve Rogers face.

“I like kids,” Steve says, smiling like a reporter’s ready to make her stance on the matter into front-page news.

“Sure, but maybe not when you’re hanging out being a person for a change. You need some you time. I had a pretty tough time, when I came back, at first. Most people can’t really relate to that kind of experience, so it’s easy to go through the motions of living your life with everything still roiling inside you. If you don’t have an outlet somewhere, it gets overwhelming fast.”

“Thank you, Samantha,” Steve says, and Sam figures she’s pushed her point as far as it can go before Steve walks right out of the juice bar and never talks to Sam again. Still -- Sam knows when forgiveness is going to be easier to come by than permission.

“I don’t mean right here right now or anything,” she says, and helps herself to Steve’s phone, still sitting on the table from Steve emptying the tiny pockets of her athletic shorts when they sat down. “But let me give you my actual phone number. Stark put my StarkPhone in your contacts I bet, but I never check that one, it’s always just Stark and his needy bullshit.” Yep, there it is -- Samantha “The Falcon” Wilson, with a charming number of fields filled out already, including “Employer: The Avengers,” which her boss at the VA would probably have something to say about. She adds “Sam Wilson (for real)” to the list.

“Don’t actually call me on this one, or I’ll have to get a third phone to be able to look at Google Maps and Twitter in peace,” she says, and hands the phone back. “But you can text me any time.”

Steve takes the phone with yet another smile, and immediately shoves it into her pocket out of sight and asks Sam how she and Tony met. Sam can recognize deflecting when she sees it, but that’s okay.

 

_You’ve reached the StarkPhone mailbox of Samantha Wilson. I set up this line because Stark made me, but I’m never gonna check these. If you need me, just text._

_[Beep]_

_Hey Samantha. Um, Sam, you, you like to be called Sam. It’s.. Steve, again, I… know you hate the phone, which is why I’m calling. All the kids these days love text messaging but uh [shaky laugh] as Natasha says, I’m just the dinosaur who can’t get with the times. Um. [choked up] I think… [exhale] God, it’s just so hard. We didn’t talk, when I was younger, I mean you know, women, we could talk about anything, but it was just — shallow stuff, that kind of, that kind of stuff was easy, but this… this whole ‘feelings’ thing, it’s hard. So I’m gonna start by leaving you these messages, until maybe one day, tell you, face to face, how I feel. So._

\---

They’re back at the smoothie place, which is maybe going to become _their_ smoothie place. This time it was Steve, not Sam, who initiated the coworkers-who-are-maybe-friends-now hangout, and Sam thinks she probably picked this place just because Sam had already given it her stamp of approval. But it’s tasty and unpretentious enough to be worth making a habit of. And apparently Captain America loves her kale.

“What makes talking on comms so different from the phone?” Steve asks, while they’re shooting the shit, and Sam puts down her smoothie.

“First of all,” she says, shaking an accusatory finger at Steve’s face, “don’t start trying to rules-lawyer me out of my perfectly legitimate hatred, it’s not going to work.” Steve puts up both hands in a laughing surrender, so Sam leans back and continues with a smile. “Second, the problem is that the phone is _too much_ like comms, except I’m by definition too far away to _do_ anything about whatever I’m overhearing. I’m a take-action kinda gal.” Sam sips her smoothie again, and shrugs. “Even if I try to just talk normally, after about two minutes it starts to feel like everything we talk about is an emergency.”

“But you don’t check your voicemail either,” Steve says, and Sam shakes her head.

“Voicemails are even worse. Emergencies that are _out of date_. Nothing more futile than a voicemail.”

Steve nods and turns her Thinking Face toward the smoothie menu, like there’s more to the mystery of Sam’s phone hatred and the final clues are hidden in the price of an extra shot of wheatgrass. Steve spends maybe half of every conversation looking like she’s pondering deep mysteries, though, so maybe the wheatgrass really is that confusing. Sam definitely does not get the appeal of it, anyway: it’s _literally_ _grass_. Not meant for human consumption.

_[Beep]_

_Hey, Sam. So… you didn’t say anything about that first message, and it was a kind of embarrassing one, so I guess I really can say anything I want to, here._ **_Practice_ ** _saying anything I want to.  About… feelings. Uh, [laugh] The main way I’m feeling right this moment is_ **_stupid_ ** _, but… the other main way I think I feel is… [quietly] lonely? Which is_ **_also_ ** _stupid, when I have such a great team to be working with, but — with the war, your team was your team, all the time, and you lived in each others’ pockets. Obviously I’m glad there’s not a war_ **_now_ ** _, but — whenever we get a call, and assemble, it’s like suddenly it’s all going to be all right, because here are these people who have my back and I’ve got theirs, but… it, afterward, it all dissolves again. It starts to seem like it was never even real. It starts to feel like nothing was even real. I know I’ve been kind of following you around… and I know you’ve got your own real life to go back to, like everybody, but… around you… [long pause] Never mind._

\---

Sam is keeping up her pace. She has her eyes fixed on the corner of the mall, where she is going to turn right and be halfway done with this lap. It’s a good pace, impressive for a civilian really, and she can feel her legs and her lungs working to keep her going. The Capitol building is glowing with the cool morning sunrise behind it and she watches doggedly as it gets larger and larger at her approach and, finally, slides around to her left. The next corner is a piece of cake, and now she’s closer to the end than to the beginning, keeping up her pace, and —

“On your left.”

The noise that Sam makes is a little more exasperated than she’d intended. Less of a friendly chuckle and more of a groan of agony.

But she watches the steady beat of the aircraft warning lights on the Washington Monument, pacing her breath and her steps, reminding herself that watching a specimen of physical perfection running in front of her has its benefits… and then she realises that Steve isn’t, in fact, in front of her.

Instead, Steve is still on her left, jogging along and admiring the architecture of the Smithsonian like everything is normal.

Sam speeds up and Steve matches her. The slight flush of Steve’s cheeks gradually fades even as Sam starts carefully counting the breaths she gulps in. Steve isn’t working out at all; this is just a show, a parody of exercise.

Sam stops. Steve skips on ahead a couple steps before noticing, then skips backwards to stand next to Sam, stretching and looking around like she normally takes a break exactly here.

“Look, the ‘on your left’ thing started out cute,” Sam says, catching her breath, “and I know you can tell that it’s getting a little less cute for me, I get that you’re trying to be nice here, but it’s even _less_ cute for you to be faking it, like you pity me. Or like I’m too stupid to tell the difference.”

Steve just says “Sam!” with ninety years of frozen pain in her voice, and she looks so earnestly horrified by the suggestion that Sam’s simmering frustration immediately boils off in a puff of exhaustion.

“Just — just go do your supersoldier thing,” she says, bracing her hands on her knees and dropping her head, “and I’ll do my mere mortal thing, and see if you can’t raise a sweat for me, huh?”

Steve still looks kind of like she’s just been dressed-down by her superior officer, so Sam works on giving her a smile.

“Seriously, I expect to see you back here in five minutes,” she says, waving, and the joke seems to help. Some of the mortification leaves Steve’s face, and she starts to jog away with only two worried looks back at Sam.

Sam wipes the sweat and the frustration from her face, takes a deep breath, and starts again. Closer to the end than the beginning of this lap. Just gotta keep at it and follow through.

When Steve does pass her again, she slows so they can nod at each other and then takes off. Steve isn’t sweating yet, but she’s back to being red-faced and focused. Sam watches her ponytail bouncing and swinging frantically as she goes, and keeps up her own pace.

_[Beep]_

_People think we’re heroes, you know, but really we’re just… science experiments. I mean — you know, right?_

_Maybe not. You must have spent years working through the system, to get to your rank, no skipping to the top. You had a goal and you worked to get there. There’s no reason for you to feel like somebody else made you._

_Look. The thing is. They didn’t technically.._ **_choose_ ** _me. Erskine did — lord, what I owe Erskine for that; but the brass, he couldn’t convince them, in the end. It was all a horrible mistake, and Erskine died for it._

_I’m not who I used to be. I got made into something else, when they made me Captain America._

_That’s why I like being around you so much, I think. You always know how to make me feel… normal. And like everything around us is normal, it’s normal and it’s all going to be okay. That’s a ridiculous way to feel about what we do, but it just feels so nice. Like at least I wasn’t a failed experiment._

\---

Sam invited Steve over for lunch at her place, and it felt like the right idea at the time but now they’re both chopping cabbage for coleslaw and Sam’s not really sure what to talk about other than work.

“Hey, you got folks to swap history lessons with?” she asks, eventually.

“I’ve been looking things up,” Steve says.

“Sure,” Sam answers, “but I bet a lot of that stuff assumes you know all kinds of things that nobody bothers to write down much. Hit me with some dumb questions.”

“Well… the military is pretty different these days. It’d be good to have some local insight. Um…could you tell me a little, uh, about desegregation?”

Sam laughs a little.

“You weren’t there for that? It was World War II, toward the end, maybe. A lot closer to your time than mine — I got no intel for you. You must’ve just missed it.”

Steve nods, absorbing this information, slicing the cabbage a lot smaller than is really called for, but Sam doesn’t interrupt her.

“Women around the same time?”

“Nah, women still can’t have combat positions. Gotta protect us from all that violence.”

Steve’s knife stills and she turns a dry look at Sam.

“I know, I know,” Sam says, laughing, “you’re preaching to the choir here! Mostly it means women in combat zones don’t get as much hazard pay. But they’re getting closer and closer to admitting that we’re fighters too.”

“Pararescue?”

“That one’s new. I was actually the first female pararescueman.”

Steve lets out a low, appreciative whistle.

“It’s a hell of a thing to be the first,” she says.

“You don’t know the half of it,” Sam tells her. “I played by every single one of their goddamn rules. I was better than every last one of those fuckers, which was the only reason they couldn’t get rid of me sooner.”

“Tell me,” Steve says, and it’s such an open, honest invitation that Sam is surprised to find that she _wants_ to. So she does.

_[Beep]_

_Sam… I wanted to say thanks for talking with me today. I got a lot of briefs on Afghanistan and North Korea and Iron Man, and not so many on things a little closer to home._

_I think I was lucky, not to be an example like you. I mean, afterward I was definitely a symbol, but — I only had to represent an idea, America, and I knew that I really was part of America… so the idea would just have to make room for me, whatever I did. You’d be the first one to know how grandiose and self-important this was of me, but I always felt like —  if people were getting that idea of America wrong, I felt like I could make America better by making Captain America better.  Like with the Howlies, and before, in training, you’re right… I broke all the rules. I was never going to be one of the guys, even though supposedly I was a guy. I was Erskine’s pet project, so he kept me hidden away from the rest, kept my secret safe but also kept— kept me safe from people who would want me to fail, if they noticed me too much._

_I’m glad Truman got his act together, with integration. I wonder what things would be like nowadays, if I hadn’t kept my secret so much, about not really being Steve._

_You must have been incredible._

\---

They’ve started eating dinner together, more often, when they both need to shove _way_ too many calories into their bodies all at once. Even over a year out, Steve eats with the cheerful gusto of a growing girl who only escaped the spectre of war rations yesterday. It makes for a nice excuse to try to surprise her. This time Sam has taken her for chicken and waffles, which Steve actually recognized from Harlem. It’s an anecdote jackpot: Sam can just lean back in her chair and Steve starts spinning yarns about sneaking off for late-night jazz in Harlem.

When the food actually comes, they have to convince their waiter that they don’t need a third place setting for everything they’d ordered, but eventually they have the table to themselves again, and they get to keep the extra mini-pitcher of syrup.

After they’ve each inhaled about half a waffle and settled into a steady pace, Sam points at Steve with her fork to get her attention. “Okay, history swap time, but I want to go first,” she says. “Did you always go by Steve? As a kid and everything?”

Steve shrugs.

“Yeah, it was always the easiest thing to remember. And I felt like I had more of a claim to it, you know, because it was my dad’s.”

This was… somehow not the answer Sam had been expecting.

“How often did you use it?”

Steve slows down to answer this one, fiddling with her food to cut her waffle into its component squares and put some butter and some chicken on each one.

“It was always pretty useful to be a boy,” she says, slowly. “I was probably less than ten when I snuck out in Bucky’s spare clothes for the first time. I looked even younger, in his clothes… Made it easier to get the kind of work I could actually do, being his scrawny kid brother. I had to have had a decade on half my coworkers.”

“Okay, your little newsboy rapscallion impression was probably adorable, but — was Steve _your_ name?”

Steve shrugs, like knowing what name is your own is a hard thing to figure out.

“I’ve been Steve pretty much full-time since ’41, but before that folks who knew me mostly called me Eileen.”

“Huh. You know, I sorta figured it was short for Stephanie or something.”

Steve shakes her head. “Never really knew anybody named Stephanie. It sounds pretty, though.”

They eat for a minute. Steve finishes her first plate of food, and cuts up the third plate they’d ordered to give a quarter of it to Sam.

“Thanks,” Sam says, as Steve — or… Eileen? — hands over her extra share. Then, “You could go back to Eileen, if you wanted,” she says. “Or pick a new one. Sarah. S.R. Something wild, like Moon Unit.”

“I never really considered it. I suppose there’s no secret to keep any more,” Steve tells her waffle “But everybody always wants to introduce me as Captain America, and Captain America’s name is Steve Rogers. It seems like it’s not so odd these days for a girl to have a name like that.”

Sam watches Steve thoughtfully eating fried chicken, and it’s like she can see Her New Friend Steve fading away again into Captain America. Even doling out syrup into waffle holes, the woman in front of her is... keeping herself in reserve.

“Well — think about it,” Sam says, as lightly as she can manage. “It’s a piece of cake to switch you in my phone contacts.”

“What, you mean I don’t already have a cute nickname in there?” Steve says, in her joshing-around voice, which at least gives Sam an excuse to go back into casual-friendly mode. And then Steve asks _her_ history swap question, and they’re back to normal.

_[Beep]_

_Hey Sam. I think you asked a harder question than you realised, when you asked what my name was? It really was handy to pass as a boy, my whole life, but being Steve in Brooklyn was nothing like being Steve in the army._

_As a kid, as Bucky’s kid brother, he called me Stevie so we could go around together and nobody would try to make a fuss about me being who I was. He could have called me anything and it would have just been me he was talking about. It didn’t matter which way I was dressed, I still did the same things. I wasn’t even trying to trick anybody half the time, not really. I just couldn’t afford to mess up my own clothes, I had so few of them, and I didn’t want to climb over fences in a dress… And it was fun, to laugh at people who figured it out, or who didn’t. There were no stakes — we got caught plenty of times, and all that happened was my mother warned me not to over exert myself and Mrs. Barnes made us do the laundry. Nobody expected me to ever marry, if I even lived to marrying age, I was so sick all the time, so I didn’t even get talks about being proper or ladylike. That ladylike stuff was for real ladies anyway, who didn’t have to scrub the shit out of their own sheets when they got sick._

_But being Steven Grant Rogers, Captain America, was this exhausting, horrifying façade… they all looked at me and saw something I’d never been, this big manly hero. It was a disguise I couldn’t even take off. It was lies on top of lies, lies in every direction, except that at the very bottom of it was this big, important,_ **_true_ ** _thing, that I could_ **_do_ ** _it and I could_ **_matter_ ** _. So my name just wasn’t important any more._

_So I could pick a different name now, but… [pause] The lie was never that I wasn’t really Steve — the lie was that I wasn’t immortal, I wasn’t superhuman, I was just as terrified and desperate as the best of them. And that hasn’t changed._

\---

The thought hits Sam with so much urgency she almost wants to call Steve just to get her answer _immediately_. The text she sends is nearly frantic:

“steve you lied on yr recruitment forms IS YOUR BIRTHDAY NOT JULY 4”

There are probably history books out there that could tell her stuff like this — not to mention stuff like the fact that Steve’s name is kind of _Eileen_ — but it seems rude to go looking up somebody’s birth certificate behind their back.

It’s been tens of seconds and Sam has drummed her fingers on the table several times; no response.

“it’s ok steve you can come clean”

“there is no way you were actually born on AMERICA’S BIRTHDAY it was a captain america thing this whole time wasn’t it”

“I can’t believe you let me buy you a cake”

“don’t make me google you”

She can’t un-think it. She’d chalked up Steve’s birthday awkwardness to the fact that _nobody_ would want to blow out 90-some candles while all their coworkers sang the national anthem — but if it _wasn’t even her real birthday_ , no wonder she treated it like a mandatory work event.

But why hadn’t she just corrected them? Captain America shouldn’t get to steal every part of Steve’s life. The nation couldn’t possibly need her to sacrifice her _birthday_.

Finally, Sam’s phone buzzes back:

“Are you questioning the divine Providence of our Creator, who brought me into this world on the most American of days, knowing that I would one day be called to be America’s greatest servant?”

“what the fuck steve, WHAT IS YOUR REAL BIRTHDAY, I am going to make you wrap my birthday present back up and open it again”

_[Beep]_

_Hi, Sam. So… talking about the past gets weird for me. Mostly because it’s not history for me, not the way it is for all the people writing books who want to know, I don’t know, what percentage of the population ate dinner at the cafeterias, or, or, exactly what month the bread lines got the worst. It was just a couple years ago for me, it was just my life, my regular life. Or if I’m talking to someone who’s not a historian, we always get stuck somehow on, something, asthma cigarettes or the Federal Art Project, there’s always something to explain. So I can’t just tell normal stories about where I’m from, most of the time._

_Except that you can’t ask me any questions, like this. You’re not even listening. So I can just… I can just_ **_tell_ ** _you that the wildest day I ever had, as a kid, was the autumn of ’32. It’d been a real scorcher of a summer and I’d been sick, but that day was cool and clear. I’d been on the Barnes balcony for the air, and I woke up with the sun on my face and took the first easy breath I’d had in weeks. Bucky skived off of work, I can’t remember what excuse he could’ve given his boss but it hardly mattered, the whole city was feeling fresh and new that day._

_So of course we weren’t going to waste a day like that. We went to Manhattan… I played the best game of marbles of my life, which maybe wasn’t the wisest move. Bucky and I were just about the same age, but people always thought I was Bucky’s kid brother, so they were pretty sore to be beaten by a little kid. Somehow it turned into a fight about each other’s dads, my dad will get your dad fired, that kind of thing, and I wanted to play my big dramatic trump card about heroic Captain Rogers. My mom had given me a photograph of him, and it was absolutely my most prized possession. I brought it with me everywhere. But I didn’t have it. I was so upset about losing it, I didn’t care that those kids thought I was lying. Bucky was upset, too — he marched the both of us right out of there, even though he had a couple marbles still in play that were pretty nice ones too— and we spent all afternoon going back everywhere we’d been, searching everywhere, asking people if they’d seen it… it started to rain a little, and we must have looked like desperate ragged urchins, digging through soggy trash piles._

_Eventually we gave up, and while we were walking home, Bucky started spinning a yarn about what we could tell my mother. Somebody stole it, he decided. There was nothing we could do. We were just trying to rescue some helpless children, and the evil schoolmaster wouldn’t let them go without the picture as ransom. None of it made sense, but he made me repeat it after him, and he kept saying, “She couldn’t be mad at you for that, could she?”_

_I still can’t remember exactly what my mother said, because I was so busy panicking. I know she mentioned the photograph, obviously, and somehow I knew she was disappointed in me, she thought I’d been careless. Bucky was still all ready to go with our story — I remember he said something like, “You’ve got it all wrong, Mrs. Rogers!” and then he turned to me to say, “Isn’t that right? She’s got it all wrong?” and my mother— if she’d been suspicious, or still disappointed, maybe I at least could have let Bucky tell it, but she looked so relieved, she smiled right at me ready to hear our cock-and-bull story, and I just— neither of them ever let me live it down— [laughing] — I burst right into tears._

_So there I was, bawling my eyes out, which panicked both of them, my mom I think because she figured the real story must have been something terrible, and Bucky because I was clearly going insane, and I start trying to explain the real story but it’s all nonsense, and every other sentence I’m either apologizing or confessing. “We went down Broadway — I was so careless! — We even looked in the trash outside Sully’s — I was going to lie to you! — I beat Bucky at marbles — I’m so sorry!” — and Bucky starts arguing with me, “It was all my idea! — You beat me fair and square! — We had to do it, to ransom the children!” and somehow out of all that mess my mom figures out that I think I lost the picture forever._

_I must have spooked her pretty badly with my hysterics, because as soon as she figures it out, she just shouts, “Oh!”, and she picks me right up like I was still a scrap of nothing and carries me across the room to put my face right in front of the picture that was — it was there the whole time!_

_Bucky’s mom found it under my pillow when she brought the soft things in from the rain, and she brought it over to my mom, who just wanted to scold me for leaving it outside like that. She just wanted to tell me it wasn’t polite to make Mrs. Barnes clean up after me, and I’d gone and confessed like it was judgment day._

_I got my first monthly the very next day. Things actually didn’t change too much for me until a good while later — I was scrawny enough to pass for Bucky’s kid brother pretty much up until the day he shipped out — so I was mostly just glad to have an explanation for all the crying._

_I don’t think this story is making any sense in a message, either. I’m sorry. I don’t even know why I’m thinking about it so much today. Part of the Steve Rogers story that doesn’t make it into the history books, I guess._

_I feel like… it’s dangerous, for Captain America to also be someone else at the same time. It’s a distraction. And a vulnerability. But… it could be nice, too._

\---

They’re making a ceremonial appearance at a graduation ceremony, and Sam knew Steve was going to be highly-decorated. So she’s a little prepared for all the medals that she’s never seen on the women’s version of the uniform before — nobody was going to take away Captain America’s medals, even after she turned out to be not technically eligible for half the things she did. It’s the purple hearts that throw her.

“You know, most people see that many oak leaves on a purple ribbon, they probably think you’re a real badass.”

“ _That’s_ the one you want to josh me about?”

“You’ve gotta be in the Guinness Book of World Records by now.”

“I didn’t beat out Albert Ireland until after the war. Well, I was ahead by two when I went down, but then he went and got three more in the next one while I was in the ice.” Steve says this with levity, but Sam feels bad for bringing it up, now that she knows it’s something Steve has apparently been googling. Googling leads to dwelling, and dwelling leads to angst, and angst leads to the dark side. Plus, Steve seems uncomfortable, embarrassed. Like she can’t handle getting attention for the things she actually deserves credit for.

“I bet you blame the healing factor,” Sam says. “It lets you get shot three times in the same time it’d take one of us suckers to get back into the field after the first one. But I know better. It’s because you’re too damn stubborn to dodge them.”

Steve shrugs awkwardly. “Better me than someone else,” she says, which definitely means she’s giving the credit all to superpowers and none to superheroics.

“Better nobody at all,” Sam says.

Steve makes her stubborn face, clenching her jaw like she’s thinking about frowning, but it looks like she’s going to let it go. Until they’re finally processing onto the stage, and Steve leans over to whisper, “That Others May Live.” Sam has never heard the pararescue motto sound so petty before, but, while she’s shaking hands with all the bright young things getting ready to save the world, she can’t help reflecting that the asshole has a point. Let she who is without self-sacrifice cast the first stone.

_[Beep]_

_Hey, Sam. You know, I was a real problem for the US military. Several problems. They couldn’t keep me secret, but they also couldn’t show me off. I accidentally made a name for myself first thing, you know, with the explosion, and once I was in the papers they had to keep me in the papers. For a while they decided to pretend it had all gone to plan, put some nice young actor into a blue jumpsuit and sent him touring with the USO as me, and kept the actual me under wraps at SHIELD as a lab rat. But I, uh, I wasn’t… a very good lab rat. Especially after Peggy got me transferred to the lab in London._

_Their other experiments… didn’t go great, and not just because I wasn’t so helpful. I was pretty good at testing out Stark’s inventions, though. And I was good at not coming back until I’d finished what I set out to do. So every time I went and got myself into trouble, they were in the same bind, where they couldn’t get rid of me._

_I think what I’m trying to say is, I’m used to things being pretty much all-or-nothing. But don’t worry -- I’m good at making it back in the end. Even if it takes me a little while._

\---

When Sam radios for backup, she doesn’t expect Steve to send her a _literal child_. The kid gives a her a way-too-chipper grin and uses some kind of telekinetic eye-lasers to levitate the debris off of her legs, and onto one of the angry robots that have been electrocuting her.

“What the fuck, Cap, you said the new kid was green, but you didn’t say he was _an actual kid_.” The kid tries to eye-laser a second robot, but it’s quicker with its ray gun this time; Sam grabs him and darts into the air, still haranguing Steve. “I asked for backup, not a babysitting gig! No offense, kid,” she adds belatedly, which doesn’t really placate the kid, since his prefrontal cortex won’t finish developing for another decade.

“Eff you,” the kid says, and squirms in her arms, which really has got to prove Sam’s fucking point.

“He’s got guts,” Steve says.

“Yeah, and I would really like for those guts to stay inside his body, so he has a chance of taking Susie to prom in a few years!”

“I do _have powers_ ,” the kid says, rolling his eyes. His eye-laser eyes, which are clearly weapons, and should not be recklessly— rolled around! By a kid!

“Yeah, no,” she says, and drops the kid on the nearest roof. “Thanks for getting that stuff off of me, I’m gonna take it from here.”

“It does him no good to coddle him, Sam,” Steve says, petulantly.

“You want to talk about what’s going to _do him good_? I’ll tell you what does him no good!” Sam is surprised how furious she is. They argue over comms through the whole damn fight, and through the whole damn trip back to SHIELD HQ.

“I’d put the age limit _higher_ than eighteen if I thought I could make it stick,” Sam says, or maybe shouts, as she storms into the debriefing room. “How about twenty-one! No superheroes who can’t legally drink!” She’s talking into her earpiece and pacing and she’s so mad she nearly paces right into Steve once she storms into the room.

Seeing Steve’s face -- just as angry as hers -- stops Sam in her tracks for a moment. But she’s _right_ , dammit.

She takes a deep breath, and says, evenly, “I know the team needs to expand, but we’re not so desperate that we have to recruit _child soldiers_.” Steve opens her mouth to reply, but Sam just jabs a finger at her oversized supersoldier chest, “That is my final word on it! Nobody under the age of eighteen, or I walk. I can’t call for backup if I can’t trust who you’re going to send, and I can’t do this if I can’t call for backup.”

That one finally looks like it’s gotten Steve to pause, so she takes her opening and walks out. Steve can handle the briefing on her own and _think about what she’s done_.

_[Beep]_

_Hi. It, um, it doesn’t make sense for it to be harder to say something like this than it is to get fed up, but — I really respect you, Sam. That’s why I butt heads with you sometimes — what you think… it matters to me. So I want you to see things my way. But you probably want me to see things your way some of the time, huh._

_I already said my piece, about why I think that kid can handle himself. You’re probably right that I have a bit of a blind spot there, that I’m seeing myself as a kid who was used to being a lot sturdier than kids today need to be. I’m not trying to be willfully stupid — I know I get pretty stubborn, you don’t have to tell me that again, but… it’s hard to really remember, all the time, how different things must be now._

_I think we also disagree a little about how much danger that kid was really in. Because from my point of view, I was sending him to_ **_you_ ** _— so whatever happened, he was going to be fine. But that’s not fair to you either, to always be putting you on the spot like that. I’m glad things went okay this time._

_I’ll try to give you a better apology later, without so much of me complaining. But it’s important, so I wanted to practice a little first. I’m, uh...  I’m sorry, Sam — I shouldn’t steamroller you like that._

\---

The Riley-shaped hole in Sam’s life has mostly been put to bed, over the years. But this morning Sam remembered it was Riley’s birthday, and then realised that last year was the first year that she hadn’t remembered it was Riley’s birthday, and somehow the smallness of that Riley-shaped hole made Riley seem more _gone_ than she’d ever been before.

So Sam is pretty absent-minded at the Avengers briefing. Steve asks to talk to her afterward. Sam thinks maybe she’s going to ask about how everybody was getting along around the conference table -- Sam has a vague feeling that there were a lot of folks new to each other who needed to do a lot of verbal tussling to figure each other out -- but Steve just rests a quiet hand on Sam’s shoulder and looks earnestly into her eyes.

“Is there any reason you shouldn’t be going into the field today?” Steve asks.

Steve deserves a real answer, so Sam takes and holds a deep breath, thinks about it, and then exhales, shaking her head.

“Just thinking about Riley,” she says.

“Your… teammate?”

Yeah. Teammate. Among other things. Keeping that secret had triple-strength fucked Sam up for _years_ , even before she’d been going to memorials and giving speeches and hugging Riley’s miserable nephews. Apparently _that_ baggage is back to crush her today, too -- though at least she can do something about this part.

“I don’t know what kind of frame of reference you have for this kind of thing, but Riley and I were… partners is more than one way,” she says, cautiously, and Steve looks surprised but also like she understands what Sam has told her, so, let’s leave it at that. “She always pretended to be a demanding princess on her birthday, which was cover for _actually_ being a demanding princess. Used to drive me up the wall. It’s dumb, but…”

“Grief is funny,” Steve agrees, and Sam is suddenly reminded of Steve’s grief, how they’ve both lost a partner and are now trying to figure out how to run their lives as a team of one. Steve bears it well, Sam thinks. Sam can see the seams where she’s patching herself back together, obviously, but -- this soon after losing Riley, Sam hadn’t been half as functional.

Steve considers Sam’s face for a long moment. “Well, I won’t order you home,” she says. “We could use the aerial support. But take a minute and think about it.”

“Roger that, Rogers,” Sam says.

_[Beep]_

_Hey Sam. You know, uh, I’ve said this a million times, but — people always expect me to be so impressed about how great things are these days, especially politically, which is obviously ridiculous because, sure, food safety standards may have improved but that’s not why we were all reading Upton Sinclair. And now it’s like you can’t even_ **_talk_ ** _about unions. Capitalists haven’t become sudden beacons of benevolence! There’s still important work for unions to do! Folks won’t even talk about why they won’t talk about these things, and_ **_they_ ** _don’t even have an excuse not to know about the Red Scare — but I didn’t call to try to figure out what to say about socialism. Sorry. Um._

_So, well, Captain America needed to go around with girls, but, uh, there were some problems with that [laugh]. But not all the women around were going to be disappointed with the real Steve Rogers, right? Especially in the Women’s Army Corps._

_So, during the war, I’d step out with a couple women like that. Never anything serious, you know, mostly girls who already had somebody but were getting a little worried about keeping up appearances — nothing like going dancing with Captain America to improve a gal’s reputation, you know. But a couple of them, uh, who didn’t already have a girl of their own, we’d, um — it wasn’t as risky as it sounds! I could’ve gotten them into at least as much trouble for the stuff we did as they could’ve gotten me in. And it was [cough] uh, really nice._

_So I guess it gets my hackles up when people act like you all invented, you know, women being with women, while I was in the ice. But it is pretty different for it to be so… public. Makes it something somebody could do just because it makes them happy._

\---

Accidentally elbowing Scott Lang in the “shrink me” button would be a lot more hilarious to Sam if it wasn’t the third time something stupid like this had happened in the same fight. They’re all doing the superhero equivalent of tripping over each other -- every new permutation of teammates is apparently going to need trial-by-fire to figure out how not to accidentally take each other out, and Sam can’t even do the math on how many fights it’s going to take before they have a hope of being able to work together, because it seems like somebody new appears every other week to up the count.

Steve is losing her cool a bit, too, trying to get Ant-man un-shrunk and the civilians off the field, while also trying to defuse a bomb _and_ actually catch the megalomaniac civil engineer that they thought they’d be recruiting today. He’s cackling maniacally and turns on his evil device, which apparently lets him evilly tunnel underneath the city. He keeps cackling as he disappears from sight beneath them, which means they can’t just stop chasing him.

She and Steve have gotten pretty good at arguing by making faces at each other, so Sam knows, as soon as Steve gets that Look on her face, that it’s all over. Sam is bleeding and down a wing, and Steve’s spotted a chance to be a big damn hero, and Sam hasn’t found the facial expression yet that can wipe that self-sacrificing determination off of Steve’s dumb mug. Sam tries looking disappointed this time, but Steve just grabs the bomb with both hands and runs for the the hole.

Before Steve can climb in, Sam shouts, “You realize that the rest of us have to pick up the pieces and put them back together after you pull shit like this, right?”

But Steve just looks all stoic while she says, “I’m sorry, Samantha.” With her head raised nobly into the sky she even manages to look like her apology isn’t totally bullshit. Then she’s down the hatch.

Of _course_ she survives, barely, but that isn’t the fucking point. 

_[Beep]_

_[sniff] [pause] [shaky inhale] Hey Sam. So I think… I’m finally ready to say it? I just, I, I woke up in that hospital room, and I saw you sitting next to me and all I could think was… [inhale] yeah, I love her, I love… I love you Samantha Wilson. [shaky breath] Maybe I’ll find the courage to say it face to face one day. But… for now.. just in case anything happens to me… I love you, Sam. I love you._

_[Beep]_

_Okay, uh, so, I probably shouldn’t lead with “I love you”, huh. It’s true, I’m so sure it’s true, but [exhale] it’d be a hell of an opener. But I don’t know what I can actually say. I… respect you. I like you. I, I feel like a whole person, when you talk to me. I don’t know what you’d want to hear._

_[Beep]_

_I think I’m figuring it out. I can’t know what to say to you, what’s_ **_fair_ ** _to say to you, until I know how_ **_you_ ** _feel. But I checked, uh, and [shaky laugh] no luck, you haven’t been leaving secret voicemails on_ **_my_ ** _phone. No inter-office memos or sealed orders from the higher-ups, either, which I’d actually ignore._

_So do I just ask you? “Hey Sam, out of curiosity, how do you rate your feelings for me on a scale of one to ten? One is ‘murder is unfortunately illegal’, ten is ‘please marry me’?” I guess that’s a pretty broad scale, I don’t know what a five would really be there. I’m pretty sure you don’t hate me or anything, so one could be ‘complete indifference’? This is ridiculous._

_[Beep]_

_The scale of one to ten is obviously right out. But actually, I think, it’s okay if you don’t feel the same way? Or, I mean — we, we’re not… courting, or anything. It would probably be a little odd if you were in love with me. I feel like maybe I shouldn’t even be in love with you. So actually I just need to ask if— if you think you_ **_could_ ** _love me? If you’d like to try?_

_Oh, good lord. I… I need to ask you on a_ **_date_ ** _. Oh no, this is— I don’t— but how, what should I even— oh, god._

_[Beep]_

_Sam, I’d love to go out to the movies some time. Sam, do you want to see a movie? But, the movie itself isn’t— Sam, would you like to go out together to the movies? Hey, Sam, let’s catch a movie this weekend! No, that’s too — Hi, Sam, just wondering if you’d like to join me for a movie! Do_ **_you_ ** _want to… Do you_ **_want_ ** _to… Would you_ **_like_ ** _to go out, to go to the movies together — obviously we’d go together, if I’m asking — Hi Sam, would you like to go to the movies? Some time? Not necessarily immediately, it’s — ugh. I seriously hope nobody has my apartment bugged._

\--- 

Steve, of course, bounced right back from this near-death experience just like all the other ones. In training, it’s like nothing even happened. Sam gives her shit about how she’ll have to go back to the actual military if she wants another purple fucking heart, and Steve takes it good-naturedly enough, tries to promise that _next_ time she will be extremely prudent and safety-conscious.

Sam is focusing on stretching her calf muscles, uncomfortable and a little ridiculous-looking, when Steve clears her throat in her “I would like to initiate a serious conversation” way.

“Hey, uh, Sam?” she says, when Sam looks up. “Would you like to… go to the movies, some time?” Steve has addressed this question to Sam’s shoulder, but that seems within normal parameters for Steve.

“Sure, something coming out that’s caught your eye?”

“No, uh, nothing in particular. I just thought it would be nice to do something, um, together? It doesn’t have to be the movies! I just thought, you know…”

Sam does not, in fact, know. But she can tell by Steve’s weird face that there’s _something_ there for her to figure out.

“It’s nice to hang out and relax…?” Sam tries, but Steve’s face just gets weirder.

“Okay, we can do this, I’m great at charades, I got you,” Sam says. “How many words?”

“Natasha keeps trying to set me up on dates,” Steve blurts, which is a baffling non-sequitur until— _no way_. Really?

“No way! Really?” Sam’s inner monologue was apparently not so “inner.” Luckily Steve can tell that she’s the excited kind of surprised — Steve says, quickly, “Only if you want to!”, but she’s leaning in toward Sam while she says it, and both of them are grinning like idiots.

“This is going to be terrible for your big stubborn ego, but Steve, sometimes you have some _great ideas_ ,” Sam says, and reaches out to touch her hand.

Steve blushes differently at that — Sam is already excited about learning all the weird ways Steve is going to blush, and all the dumb faces she will make, now that Sam is really, truly getting to know the person underneath Captain America — and Sam waits out her awkwardness.

“Um,” Steve says, tentatively playing with Sam’s fingers, which is so adorable Sam needs to use all her superhero focus to remember to listen. “I’ve been thinking… if I’m going to have my own life, not as Captain America, it might as well.. not be with Captain America’s name. When we’re, you know, together, not at work or anything — do you think you could call me… Eileen?”

It’s so _Steve_ to build up so much to such a small ask, Sam can’t help smiling. Though, really, it’s so… Eileen?

“Of course, Eileen,” she says, practicing the name in her mouth. This is going to be fun.

_[Beep]_

_Sam, oh wow, I can’t believe that worked! I am so excited, I— oh god, now I have to pick a movie, and something to wear, this is only going to get_ **_worse_ ** _, isn’t it._

_But I guess I’m still excited. [laugh]_

\---

Steve-- Eileen-- on a date is every bit as adorable as Sam had dreamed. Sam has about forty-five seconds to appreciate the adorable vision of Miss Eileen Rogers, Dressed Up For A Nice Date — apparently she’s put on _pantyhose_ , and curled her hair, not to mention dipped into that senselessly-hoarded back pay for a new dress — and then the adorable vision opens its mouth and wants to talk shop all the way to the movie theatre. Sam weighs in on team-building exercises and doesn’t even call Eileen “mom,” and changes the subject with a stop at a pharmacy for cheap candy to smuggle into the theatre.

Their eyes turn out to be bigger than their purses. Eileen says wistfully that a hoodie would be the perfect smuggling accoutrement, but then she doesn’t let Sam go and buy them new ones even though it would be _hilarious_ . They could have gotten sunglasses and baseball caps, too, to go completely undercover for their life of movie crime. But they have at least as much fun testing the limits of modern foundation garments to store illicit snacks. Evidently, storage capacity is the only way in which underwear has _not_ improved, but they get creative.

In the end, the movie itself is kind of boring and uncreative, but, well, they already live in a science fiction action movie. It was going to be hard for Hollywood to surprise them.

_[Beep]_

_Hi, Sam. I should have said, when I left, that I had a really nice night. I mean, I tried to say it, I hope you could tell, but— I had a really nice night tonight._

_I know we’ve talked a lot about that whole coming home from the front thing, beds too soft and too many civilians with too little firepower to protect them all, so I don’t want to talk your ear off about it any more than I have already, but… I already feel like I can relax a little more around you than usual. You’ve got my back. I don’t have to worry about protecting you. So when_ **_you_ ** _say something is safe, I can believe you. I can trust you. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt safe. [laugh] It’s worth sitting through a pretty terrible movie just for that. So… thank you._

_I feel like I end all of these messages with “thank you.” I hope you know what I really mean. … What am I saying? You can’t know what I mean, because you don’t listen to these, so I’m not actually thanking you every ten minutes._

_Well. I’ll work on it. Because you should know how grateful I am._

\---

The soldier stuck glad-handing at a gala is kind of a cliché, but it _is_ Stark’s party, and Stark is a total cliché. Sam braces herself for the gauntlet, consoling herself with the fact that misery loves company, only to discover that Eileen is, actually, pretty great at galas. She looks crisp and all-American in her uniform, which is the uniform of the actual US military for a change. Sam wonders for a moment whether it’s more obnoxiously patriotic to go around in a giant spandex American flag, or to have that many ribbons and oak leaves pinned to you. It must be one of Eileen’s underrated superpowers that neither one actually looks obnoxious. Sam’s glad she had the chance to practice looking at Eileen in all her Steve-ness, because it means she gets to smirk from a distance while everyone _else_ trips over their own feet trying to figure how the fuck anyone could have time to get that many medals.

She watches Eileen move from one happy group of people in impressive clothes to the next, and, more importantly, watches all of them _still_ happy after she leaves, even though Steve barely does more than give them all superhero-strength handshakes. No forty-five minute discussions of the gastrointestinal disorders of the bichon frise for _Captain America_ , it seems.

Sam lurks in the corner with two glasses of champagne, and the next time Eileen is between groups she arrives at Eileen’s side to deliver one.

Eileen accepts the champagne with a friendly greeting, and placidly lets Sam link her arm with Eileen’s and lean in close.

“I declare you to be my escort for the evening,” Sam informs her. “I know when to leave a tough job to a professional.”

They mingle successfully with one of Stark’s important civilian investors. Successfully, in that this person is impressed with how superhero-ly they are and is plenty smug to have been personally noticed by such illustrious guests, but also successfully in that they don’t have to talk for more than about five minutes and then they’re several feet closer to the table of snacks.

“You are seriously great at this,” Sam tells her, “I can’t believe I’ve done this by myself this whole time.”

“The trick,” Eileen murmurs, polite smile belied by the cool quiet tone of her voice, “is never to fool yourself into thinking the stakes are low.”

“I won’t call you paranoid, out of respect for how your best friend is literally a spy, but that sounds exhausting.”

Eileen shrugs. “It works. Treat it like an enemy engagement, never stop thinking about the angles, respond cautiously and non-committally… even if you don’t really know the social rules, engaging strategically makes it possible to keep up. Plus, I think they can tell when I’m thinking serious strategy, because everybody stands about a foot farther away from me.”

“Isn’t a party supposed to be fun?”

“Sure, for the guests — not for the entertainment.”

_[Beep]_

_Okay. So. Big pretty dresses. Not my thing. I mean, used to be I was too small for ‘em, they’d just swallow me up. And now I guess I’m too big for them. Can’t do anything useful in a gown. Never really understood the appeal. Except, except — you were gorgeous last night, you know that? I mean, uh, not that you’re not usually — [cough] Right. But you looked beautiful._

_And those jewels — I always thought the idea of jewelry was that_ **_it’s_ ** _pretty, so maybe it doesn’t matter so much whether_ **_you’re_ ** _pretty, but on you it just kept making me notice things like your collarbone or— or your earlobes. I could have spent an hour drawing your earlobes._

_You know, when I picked up the phone, I thought I was going to complain at you — that’s the idea here, right, I call you up so I can tell you all my sob stories without having to look you in the eye afterward. And I thought for sure after a night performing like a trained monkey, I’d be full of sob stories. But I feel… all right? I think maybe I feel this way because I just had… a wonderful time? So I guess I called to say… thank you. For being wonderful._

\---

Sam’s mother raised her to be a lady, which means she takes things slow with her supersoldier girlfriend, and doesn’t kiss and tell. But two creative people in peak physical condition can accomplish a lot when they trust each other, so she’s smug as hell.

_[Beep]_

_Um… uh. [Pause, small quiet giggle] No, never mind, uh, I don’t have anything new to say, you’re just gonna have to figure out how I feel in person! [Laugh]_

\---

The more she sees not-Steve-but- _Eileen_ , the more Sam can see how hard “Steve Rogers” is working at being Captain America all the goddamn time. Steve— Eileen is still going by Steve “at work,” which… well, on the one hand, it makes it easier to keep personal stuff at home and keep things professional on the battlefield. Because good lord, Steve Rogers is a stubborn asshole sometimes.

They haven’t been out in the field together enough for it to feel routine yet — but they are starting to feel the pull of routine, which is scarier to Sam than the unknown. Constant vigilance is scary and exhausting— you won’t _feel_ safe— but it’s safer than treating the world like it’s not out to surprise you. Today’s just her and Steve in the backwoods of Virginia, following up on one of those rumours that could be a new supervillain in the works, or a new recruit for the Avengers, or just somebody with way too much time on their hands, and she wishes she could at least rule out _one_ of those.

“I think we should just scout today, and come back later to go in,” Sam says. Something about the run-down barn behind this house is giving her the willies.

“The more time we take to prepare, the more time they have to get tipped off and to leave,” Steve says. “Or for someone else to get here first, or for an accident to happen — we should go for it.” Steve is ready to barrel on in like there’s nothing at stake, here, and Sam just wants to shake her.

“Look, no matter how good you are, you can be unlucky,” Sam says, her voice maybe getting a little louder as she goes on, “and you only have to be unlucky _one time!_ ”

“You think I don’t know that?”

If Steve had yelled it, Sam might have yelled right on back, but she says it quietly, one hand reaching out for Sam’s arm. Which is -- which is reasonable, and mature, and ridiculous, how can Eileen be reasonable and mature when her grief is so much newer and bigger. Falcon can do everything Captain America can do, just slower, sure, and that’s supposed to include _grieving_ too?

“Right,” she says, not shouting it. “Sure. Fine.” Fine, let’s go in the creepy barn. Let’s go do things the big, flashy, sloppy way because Captain Fucking America can’t imagine that _she_ might be the important person that somebody doesn’t want to lose.

Sam flings open the barn door, and of _course_ it’s full of weird mutated farm animals that immediately start attacking her. She tries to fly up out of the way, but flying and barns don’t mix and she crashes right back down, flubbing the landing in a way that has her _really_ regretting all her life choices. Steve comes running in through the barn’s rear door, shield out to smash right through the wood, and she holds her own against the mob. It’s, by their standards, not a crisis yet, but it’s all so _awful_ \-- all that anxious build-up and Sam is worse than useless. She can see exactly where she ought to be in this fight, and it’s not _on the floor_.

Steve is holding her own against the creatures, smashing through them like they’re in a farm-themed game of pinball, and then, _shit_ , hay is spilling out of the hayloft onto them and the barn probably _needed_ some of those pillars, it’s coming down on top of them-- shit, shit, Steve, why do you hate structural stability?

_[Beep]_

_I’m so sorry, Sam. I should have listened to you, or-- it should have been me. Or -- I don’t want it to be either of us. I want you to be my partner, you know, for real. I want-- No, you know what, you need to actually hear this one._

\---

It’s probably ironic, that _Sam_ is the one limping out of SHIELD’s sickbay, after all the lectures she’s been giving lately about safety precautions. She’d feel more embarrassed if she didn’t feel almost relieved that the other shoe had dropped. She’d been distracted, and stupid, and she’d gotten what was coming to her… and she’d woken up, alive, to her girlfriend, alive, and holding open doors for her.

“Hi,” she croaks, sheepishly.

“It should have been me,” Eileen says, quietly. “It would have been better if it had been me.”

“What, just because you’ve got superpowers?” Her ankle is just sprained, not broken; she doesn’t even have crutches, just a cane -- she’s going to be fine.

“Yes,” Eileen says, entirely seriously. “Sam, it— it’s going to be weeks before you can walk again.”

“Whereas you’d be ready to jump out of a helicopter next week.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Eileen says, again. “I know today you just got distracted, but…” Eileen pauses, like she’s reminding herself of her script. “If I’m not supposed to recklessly endanger myself, I… I can’t stand for you to recklessly endanger _yourself_ instead,” she says, carefully. “I want you to be my, my wingman, you know? I want you to be _by my side_. Not… getting yourself into trouble because we can’t trust each other. And not in front of me taking bullets.”

Sam doesn’t have a good answer to that.

“I’m sorry, Eileen,” she says, which is a little beside the point, probably, but it’s true and it’s what she can stand to say right now. “I want that too.”

_[Beep]_

_Just… thinking of you, Sam. [shaky breath] Seems like I’m always just… thinking of you._

\---

Sam’s recovery has been quiet. It’s given them both time to clean up their apartments, call their friends, catch up on sleep… Sam has officially run out of excuses. So tonight Eileen is coming over, to sketch Sam. Eileen was so excited about being able to afford all the oil pastels she could want, and all the colours available, and then she said so many nice things about Sam’s bone structure — what kind of monster could rain on that parade?

Sam extracted a couple promises first. One, everybody keeps their clothes on. Two, they do the sketching in the privacy of their own homes. Three, Eileen doesn’t show the drawings to anybody without Sam’s prior approval.

Sam isn’t sure why she’s so nervous, really. She’d let Eileen take photos of her any day. Well — it’s important to Eileen, but she she doesn’t know how to get ready for it and she can’t just jump in, so of course it’s a recipe for nerves.

The first couple minutes are even more awkward than Sam’s worst nightmares. Eileen asks her to sit by the window and read, but Sam can barely even tell whether the book is the right way up. She can hear Eileen moving around, and feel Eileen looking at her. But if she tries to glance over, or say anything, Eileen just shushes her.

But then somehow she relaxes, and it’s… nice, to hear the whisper of crayon on paper, and to hear the rhythms of Eileen’s work — a long steady pace filling something in, and then silence, or the clatter of Eileen rooting around for just the right colour, two or three tentative strokes and Eileen’s huff of breath as the quietest sound of her dissatisfaction.

She can feel herself dozing off but she doesn’t want to break the spell, so she doesn’t say anything, just closes her eyes and listens to the fits and starts of Captain America giving her absolute fullest attention to something that will never hurt anybody.

_[Beep]_

_Hey Sam. I know me coming over today must have been awfully boring for you, so I wanted to thank you. I mean, I said thank you, and I meant it, thank you!, but I wanted to tell you, I guess, why it meant so much to me._

_Drawing is… another way of looking at the world. It slows things down. And you can’t skip over things. I mean, you want to simplify the lines, find the essence of the gesture, but — you can’t get to the simplification without looking first, really looking, no lying to yourself about what you see, no letting your eyes take shortcuts._

_Especially with colour. The more simple the colour of something looks, the more complicated it always turns out to be. White is the hardest thing to pin down, when you’re painting, because you pretty much never want to just slather a glob of actual white onto the canvas. Sometimes you do with black, for deep shadows, or for tenebroso — but white is going to be a yellow paint, or blue, or pink, sometimes green, and it just looks bright and pure because of how different it is from everything around it. I feel like this should probably turn into a metaphor or something, but actually I just… really enjoyed looking at all the colors in your skin. It’s not the kind of thing I get to do all the time. Your skin is really beautiful. And your, your eye sockets? [Happy laugh] I’m glad I practice saying these things, geez, eye sockets? But they really are a— a nice shape. The curve of the bone, and the shape of your eye, and the crease of your eyelid — I can’t believe you don’t have shadows under your eyes, the way you work yourself into the ground._

_Uh. Thank you for letting me see your eye sockets. It was all… really lovely. [pause] I really do love you, Sam._

\---

“Up there!” Steve yells, one hand pointing at the building across the street from the one her half of the team has been climbing, but the other hand outstretched toward Sam -- Tony takes off, but Sam stays grounded, and not just to admire the thigh strength it must take for Steve to stay halfway up that column; somehow she knows that this is what Steve’s gestures mean. Steve looks right at her -- Sam got it right -- and tosses Sam her shield.

Sam is amazed to find that it feels right in her hands -- the first time she picked it up it was so light she nearly fumbled it right out of her hands -- but this time she just crouches and braces it against her shoulders, figuring Steve’s got something big coming her way. Sure enough, Steve throws Natasha at her next -- Steve must’ve made it up to the ledge while Sam was getting into position -- and Sam is professional enough to use the shield to boost Natasha into the air first and laugh _afterward_. Her laugh is cut off by Clint getting thrown down onto the shield, too, but she uses a bit of engine power to make up for her fumble and he sticks the landing.

“I can fly, you know!” she shouts at Steve, throwing the shield back -- Steve is already in the air toward her, of course -- for a moment Sam is overwhelmed with joy at the mathematical perfection of the two of them, Steve grabbing the shield at the top of its parabolic arc while she soars through the air at Sam, who shoots up from the ground to catch Steve at the top of _her_ parabolic arc, and pulls the two of them up into the bright blue sky.

“I wanted a private ride,” Eileen tells her, and Sam flies the both in through the hole Tony blasted.

The moment doesn’t last long -- in the split-second it takes Sam to flip off the sunglasses lens of her goggles, Steve must have taken in the whole tableau -- one hostile, arrows sticking out of it, not moving -- Tony, moving slowly -- sparks of electricity on them both -- Natasha moving but Clint not moving -- something sickly and glowing in the middle of it all --

Steve shouts, “ _Shield_ ,” and Sam flies straight for that wrong-looking _something_ \-- Steve reverses the shield, gets it out out in front of them like they’re just trying to catch a bug in a supersized glass, and Sam flies them straight down on top of it -- she pulls in her wings just before they crash through the floor -- she fires the jet pack, pushing on Steve who pushes on the shield to shove the _something_ down, away, through another floor, two -- with the adrenaline and the debris she half-wonders whether she’ll even be able to tell when it blows, if it’s the kind of _something_ that blows -- they weren’t that far up, are they going to run out of building before it--

It blows.

In the hospital, afterward, they’re told that they made it to the basement. They must have been mere inches above the foundation when it blew. They didn’t make it far enough to protect the two of them from the fire that rolled out in all directions from underneath the shield; all their edges are well-crisped. But the shield and the cement foundation absorbed enough of the shockwave that the building didn’t fall over, so overall Sam counts it as a win.

After the briefing and the skin grafts -- and Sam would like to believe that it’s Steve Rogers who makes those two happen in that order, but she knows it’s all Eileen -- they’re finally left to rest, wrapped up in matching bandages in matching hospital beds. They’re probably even the same amount of injured, Sam realises, for the next few hours, at least -- Sam was further from the blast, but her burns are going to take a lot longer to heal. If there’s any justice in the world, super-healing comes with super-itching, too.

She can hear Eileen fidgeting uncomfortably, and then sigh in frustration, so that’s probably a yes.

“So, come here often?” Sam says. She tries to make it sound more like joke, but she’s still half-dead from the painkillers. Eileen laughs, though, so, mission accomplished.

“Eh, only when I can see this girl I like,” Eileen says. Her voice is joking, but her face is soft and sincere.

“She must be something, to be worth the cover charge,” Sam says.

“She’s--” Eileen blushes, and goes quiet for a long stretch. “Yeah,” she says, “she’s real special.”

“I’ve got a girl like that, too,” Sam says, and closes her eyes. Eileen wouldn’t be Eileen if she got all lovey-dovey, even after a heroic near-death experience. Sam figures they know where they stand with each other.

“Actually, uh,” Eileen says, surprising Sam out of the nap she was almost ready to take. “I should -- I should call her and let her know,” Eileen stammers, and uses some of that superhero stamina to dig her phone out of the pile of personal effects on her nightstand.

Sam watches with bemusement as Eileen waits through the quiet, tinny ringing she can hear over Eileen’s phone speakers -- her actual phone was reduced to rubble today, but her StarkPhone mostly survived and is off being repaired with the rest of her gear. Tony evidently decided not to answer her phone for her, because there’s a beep, and then Eileen is talking:

“Hi, Sam. Apparently we’re both a little, uh, danger prone. Occupational hazard, I guess. I don’t know how you make me feel so safe when we spend half our time about to die,” and Eileen laughs at this but Sam keeps her smile silent so Eileen won’t stop. “The whole time I was hanging onto that shield, I was thinking that I wanted you to be okay. I needed you to be okay so, uh. I'm glad this one worked out. It scares me to see you get hurt. But I guess I put you through enough of that too. But we're not out there together to keep each other safe. We're out there because together, we're... more. One of these days I figure we’ll have to retire, call the government’s bluff on my pension. But for now, having you with me, fighting an important fight side by side -- I wouldn’t trade that for the world.”

Eileen says it all with her eyes locked on the ceiling, exactly as if Sam wasn’t going to hear her until she listened to the message later, but Eileen’s panicked face turns shyly pleased as she talks, and Sam falls in love with her all over again.

“You’ve made my life into something I never thought it could be. I, um, I-- oh, it cut me off,” Eileen says, startled back into talking to Sam directly. She blushes bright red. “Hopefully -- uh, hopefully that gets the point across,” she says.

“Give me your phone,” Sam says, grinning. Eileen tosses the phone over, and it even manages not to land on top of any of Sam’s extra-crispy parts. She finds herself in Eileen’s contacts — saved right at the top of her favourites — and calls her own number.

“I can’t let you have the last word like that,” she says, while her own phone rings. “I need to set the record straight.”

She and Eileen make faces at each other all through the pre-recorded message, and Eileen actually says “beep” when it ends -- but after a beat, Sam laughs and throws the phone back at Eileen without leaving a message.

 

_You’ve reached the StarkPhone mailbox of Samantha Wilson. I set up this line because Stark made me, but I’m never gonna check these. If you need me, just text._

_[Beep]_

_This voicemail box is full._


End file.
